HOA President Bully

In this post, "HOA President Bully," will focus on the specific issue of dealing with a bully who is running your HOA. As mentioned in previous articles, one of the major drawbacks of HOAs is poor leadership. If you're reading this, there's a good chance that you're experiencing poor leadership within your HOA. Over the next several paragraphs, we'll define bullying in this context and its applicability to HOAs. We'll also discuss what to do if you find yourself with a HOA president bully and share a personal story.

Defining bullying

For the purposes of this post, let's define a bully as someone that continuously and knowingly uses their power and aggression to dominate and control others. Thinking about this topic may give you flashbacks of dealing with bullies in school, which brings up a good point: there are bullies in all aspects of life. You can probably draw on strength here as there is a good chance you already have experience dealing with bullies in life and this is only slightly different.

Bullying in HOAs

Given the power that comes with having control over the actions of your community, it should be no surprise that HOAs are an attractive environment to bullies. In theory, there is no better place for someone who wants to use power and aggression to dominate and control others than to take control over their home environment. What becomes important to understand in this situation is the performance of the bully that you are dealing with. We break it down to the following three options:

1. You are dealing with a bully that also performs poorly in their role. If so, this is the worst case scenario because you have a bad person that is also incompetent. This does however offer a simple solution of needing to replace the individual.

2. You are dealing with a bully that does a decent job performing in their role. If so, you need to find out how difficult it is to replace this person with a higher quality person. It might also be worth trying to work out your issues with this person to move toward a mutually beneficial solution.

3. You are dealing with a bully that does a great job performing in their role. If so, you need to ask yourself if it's worth it to leave things as they are. If the person is truly awful and is bringing down the larger team around them or if there is someone else that is talented that can clearly step into that role, then it's worth removing this individual. However, let's not be naive to the fact that it is not easy to find someone in the HOA that actually does a great job and for most people their home is their biggest investment.

What can you do?

A great place to start is to seek support from other members of the community. You are all in this together as the HOA can have a pretty big impact on your lives and you can influence even the biggest bullies with enough support.

You need to document all incidents of bullying. By keeping a record including dates, times, and details of the event you will have an easier time gaining the support of the community. This will also help in the event that you need to remove this individual from their role on the board.

When communicating with bullies it might be best to be professionally assertive. They are used to being dominant in communication, but you need to respectfully push back when necessary. When you know you are right, stand up for yourself.

Report your findings to the appropriate parties that can help. Every situation is different, but it might be best to start with seeking help from the other board members. If the bullying is escalated to the point of where you feel unsafe or threatened, don't hesitate to contact the authorities if need be.

Personal story

My friend had a bully HOA president in their community. This gentleman was unwilling to work with others and acted in a way that would more closely resemble a dictator than a board President. He failed to take feedback from residents with regard to proposed community projects and would shout aggressively at them in board meetings. The result was that the community decided to come together and remove this fellow from his role as President. They did so by gathering support of other residents that attended the meetings and witnessed his behavior, they documented the incidents, and they won the support of the other board members who were able to vote to remove him from his role as President.

HOA joke of the day: Why did the HOA bully become a gardener? Because they love pruning people's dreams down to size!

Thank you for reading this post. We hope you found it informative and interesting.

You can read our next post: Can Police Enforce HOA Rules?

-HOA Chief 3/27/24